




































RALPH WALDO EMERSON 





OVE and FRIENDSHIP 


BY & & 

RALPH 


waldo Emerson 


\ 





- 3 ' 


Philadelphia d d d d 

HENRY ALTEMUS 










Copyrighted, 1896, by Henry Altemus. 


/ 2-3/7(3 


HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER, 
PHILADELPHIA* 


LOVE 








LOVE. 


Every soul is a celestial Venus to every other 
soul. The heart has its sabbaths and jubilees, in 
which the world appears as a hymeneal feast, and 
all natural sounds and the circle of the seasons 
are erotic odes and dances. Love is omnipresent 
in nature as motive and reward. Love is our 
highest word, and the synonym of God. Every 
promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments ; 
each of its joys ripens into a new want. Nature, 
uncontainable, flowing, fore-looking, in the first 
sentiment of kindness anticipates already a be¬ 
nevolence which shall lose all particular regards 
in its general light. The introduction to this 
felicity is in a private and tender relation of one 
to one, which is the enchantment of human life •, 
which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, 
seizes on man at one period, and works a. revolu¬ 
tion in his mind and body ; unites him to* his race, 
pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, 
carries him with new sympathy into nature, en¬ 
hances the power of the senses, opens the imagin¬ 
ation, adds to his character heroic and sacred 
attributes, establishes marriage, and gives per¬ 
manence to human society. 


( 5 ) 



6 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


The natural association of the sentiment of love 
with the heyday of the blood, seems to require 
that in order to portray jt in vivid tints which 
every youth and maid should confess to be true to 
their throbbing experience, one must not be too 
old. The delicious fancies of youth reject the 
least savor of a mature philosophy, as chilling 
with age and pedantry their purple bloom. And, 
therefore, I know I incur the imputation of ui> 
necessary hardness and stoicism from those who 
compose the Court and Parliament of Love. But 
from these formidable censors I shall appeal to my 
seniors. For, it is to be considered that this pas¬ 
sion of which we speak, though it begin with the 
young, yet forsakes not the old, or rather suffers 
no one who is truly its servant to grow old, but 
makes the aged participators of it, not less than 
the tender maiden, though in a different and 
nobler sort. For, it is a fire that kindling its first 
embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, 
caught from a wandering spark out of another 
private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms 
and beams upon multitudes of men and women, 
upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up 
the whole world and all nature with its generous 
flames. It matters not, therefore, whether we at¬ 
tempt to describe the passion at twenty, at thirty, 
or at eighty years. He who paints it at the first 
period, will lose some of its later, he who paints 
it at the last, some of its earlier traits. Only it is 
to be hoped that by patience and the muses’ aid, 
we may attain to that inward view of the law, 


Love. 


7 


which shall describe a truth ever young, ever 
beautiful, so central that it shall commend itself 
to the eye at whatever angle beholden. 

And the first condition is, that we must leave a 
too close and lingering adherence to the actual, to 
facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in 
hope and not in history. For, each man sees his 
own life defaced and disfigured, as the life of man 
is not, to his imagination. Each man sees over 
his own experience a certain slime of error, whilst 
that of other men looks fair and ideal. Let any 
man go back to those delicious relations which 
make the beauty of his life, which have given 
him sincerest instruction and nourishment he 
will shrink and shrink. Alas! I know not 
why, but infinite compunctions embitter in 
mature life all the remembrances of budding 
sentiment, and cover every beloved name. Every 
thing is beautiful seen from the point of the in¬ 
tellect, or as truth. But all is sour, if seen as ex¬ 
perience. Details are always melancholy; the 
plan is seemly and noble. It is strange how pain¬ 
ful is the actual world,—the painful kingdom of 
time and place. There dwells care and canker 
and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is im¬ 
mortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the 
muses sing. But with names and persons and the 
partial interests of to-day and yesterday, is grief. 

The strong bent of nature is seen in the pro¬ 
portion which this topic of personal relations 
usurps in the conversation of society. What do 







LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


8 

as how he has sped in the history of this senti¬ 
ment? What books in the circulating library circu¬ 
late? How we glow over these novels of pas¬ 
sion, when the story is told with any spark of 
truth and nature! And what fastens attention, 
in the intercourse of life, like any passage betray¬ 
ing affection between two parties ? Perhaps we 
never saw them before, and never shall meet them 
again. But we see them exchange a glance, or 
betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer 
strangers. We understand them, and take the 
warmest interest in the development of the ro¬ 
mance. All mankind love a lover. The earliest 
demonstrations of complacency and kindness are 
nature’s most winning pictures. It is the dawn 
of civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. 
The rude village boy teazes the girls about the 
school-house door ;—but to-day he comes running 
into the entry, and meets one fair child arranging 
her satchel : he holds her books to help her, and 
instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself 
from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. 
Among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough, 
but one alone distances him : and these two little 
neighbors that were so close just now, have learned 
to respect each other’s personality. Or who can 
avert his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half- 
artless ways of school-girls who go into the 
country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of 
paper, and talk half an hour about nothing, with 
the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. In the 
village, they are on a perfect equality, which love 


LOVE. 


9 


delights in, and without any coquetry the happy, 
affectionate nature of woman flows out in this 
pretty gossip. The girls may have little beauty, 
yet plainly do they establish between them and 
the good boy the most agreeable, confiding rela¬ 
tions, what with their fun and their earnest, 
about Edgar, and Jonas, and Almira, and who 
was invited to the party, and who danced at the 
dancing school, and when the singing school 
would begin, and other nothings concerning which i 
I the parties cooed. By-and-by that boy wants a 
wife, and very truly and heartily will he know 
where to find a sincere and sweet mate, without 
any risk such as Milton deplores as incident to 
scholars and great men. 

I have been told that my philosophy is un¬ 
social, and, that in public discourses, my reverence 
for the intellect makes me unjustly cold to the 
personal relations. But now I almost shrink at 
the remembrance of such disparaging words. For 
persons are love’s world, and the coldest philoso¬ 
pher cannot recount the debt of the young soul 
wandering here in nature to the power of love, 
without being tempted to unsay as treasonable to 
nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. 
For, though the celestial rapture falling out of 
heaven seizes only upon those of tender age, and 
although a beauty overpowering all analysis or 
comparison, and putting us quite beside ourselves, 
we can seldom see after thirty years, yet the 
remembrance of these visions outlasts all other 
remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers on the old- 



id 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


est brows. But here is a strange fact; it may 
seem to many men in revising their experience, 
that they have no fairer page in their life’s book 
than the delicious memory of some passages 
wherein affection contrived to give a witchcraft 
surpassing the deep attraction of its own truth to a 
parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances. In 
looking backward, they may find that several things 
which were not the charm, have more reality to 
this groping memory than the charm itself which 
embalmed them. But be our experience in 
particulars what it may, no man ever forgot 
the visitations of that power to his heart and 
brain, which created all things new; which 
was the dawn in him of music, poetry and art; 
which made the face of nature radiant with pur¬ 
ple light, the morning and the night varied en¬ 
chantments ; when a single tone of one voice 
could make the heart beat, and the most trivial 
circumstance associated with one form, is put in 
the amber of memory: when we became all eye 
when one was present, and all memory when one 
was gone ; when the youth becomes a watcher of 
windows, and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, 
or the wheels of a carriage ; when no place is too 
solitary, and none too silent for him who has richer 
company and sweeter conversation in his new 
thoughts, than any old friends, though best and 
purest, can give him ; for, the figures, the motions, 
the words of the beloved object are not like other 
images written in water, but, as Plutarch said, 






LOVE. 


ii 


“ enamelled in fire,” and make tlie study of mid¬ 
night. 

“ Thou art not gone being gone, wheree’er thou art, 
Thou leav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy lov¬ 
ing heart.” 

In the noon and the afternoon of life, we still 
throb at the recollection of days when happiness 
was not happy enough, but must be drugged with 
the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the 
secret of the matter, who said of love, 

“ All other pleasures are not worth its pains: ” 

and when the day was not long enough, but the 
night too must be consumed in keen recollec¬ 
tions ; when the head boiled all night on the pil¬ 
low with the generous deed it resolved on ; when 
the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars 
were letters, and the flowers ciphers, and the air 
was coined into song; when all business seemed 
an impertinence, and all the men and women run¬ 
ning to and fro in the streets, mere pictures. 

The passion re-makes the world for the youth. 
Jb makes all things alive and significant. Nature 
grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of 
the tree sings now to his heart and soul. Al¬ 
most the notes are articulate. The clouds have 
faces, as he looks on them. The trees of the 
forest, the waving grass and the peeping flowers 
have grown intelligent; and almost he fears to 
trust them with the secret which they seem to 


12 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In 
the green solitude he finds a dearer home than 
with men. 

“ Fountain heads and pathless groves. 

Places which pale passion loves, 

Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
Are safely housed, save bats and owls, 

A midnight bell, a passing groan, 

These are the sounds we feed upon.” 

Behold there in the wood the fine madman! 
He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights; he 
dilates ; he is twice a man ; he walks with arms 
akimbo ; he soliloquizes ; he accosts the grass and 
the trees; he feels the blood of the violet, the 
clover and the lily in his veins; and he talks with 
the brook that wets his foot. 

The causes that have sharpened his percep¬ 
tions of natural beauty, have made him love music 
and verse. It is a fact often observed, that 
men have written good verses under the inspira¬ 
tion of passion, who cannot write well under any 
other circumstances. 

The like force has the passion over all his nature. 
It expands the sentiment; it makes the clown gen¬ 
tle, and gives the coward heart. Into the most 
pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage 
to defy the world, so only it have the counten¬ 
ance of the beloved object. In giving him to an¬ 
other, it still more gives him to himself. He is anew 
man, with new perceptions, new and keener pur¬ 
poses, and a religious solemnity of character and 


LOVE. 


*3 

aims. He does not longer appertain to his family 
and society. He is somewhat. He is a person. 
lie is a soul. 

And here let us examine a little nearer the na¬ 
ture of that influence which is thus potent over 
the human youth. Let us approach and admire 
Beauty, whose revelation to man we now cele¬ 
brate,—beauty, welcome as the sun wherever it 
pleases to shine, which pleases everybody with it 
and with themselves. Wonderful is its charm. It 
seems sufficient to itself. The lover cannot paint 
his maiden to his fancy poor and solitary. Like a 
tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing 
loveliness is society for itself, and she teaches his 
eye why Beauty was ever painted with Loves and 
Graces attending her steps. Her existence makes 
the world rich. Though she extr udes all others 
persons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, 
yet she indemnifies him by carrying out her own 
being into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, 
so that the maiden stands to him for a representa¬ 
tive of all select things and virtues. For that 
reason the lover sees never personal resemblances 
in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His 
friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her 
sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover 
sees no resemblance except to summer evenings 
and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song 
of birds. 

Beauty is ever that divine thing the ancients 
esteemed it. It is, they said, the flowering of vir¬ 
tue. Who can analyze the nameless charm which 






14 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


glances from one and another face and form? We 
are touched with emotions of tenderness and 
complacency, but we cannot find whereat this 
dainty emotion, this wandering gleam point, lb 
is destroyed for the imagination by any attempt 
to refer it to organization. Nor does it point to 
any relations of friendship or love that society 
knows and has, but, as it seems to me, to a quite 
other and unattainable sphere, to relations of 
transcendent delicacy and sweetness, a true faerie 
land; to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. 
We cannot get at beauty. Its nature is like opal¬ 
ine doves’-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. 
Herein it resembles the most excellent things, 
which all have this rainbow character, defying all 
attempts at appropriation and use. What else did 
Jean Paul Richter signify, when he said to music, 
“Away! away! thou speakest to me of things 
which in all my endless life I have found not, and 
shall not find.” The same fact may be observed 
in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is 
then beautiful, when it begins to be incompre¬ 
hensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and 
can no longer be defined by compass and 
measuring wand, but demands an active imagina¬ 
tion to go with it, and to say what it is in the act 
of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is al¬ 
ways represented in a transition from that which 
is representable to the senses, to that which is not. 
Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same re¬ 
mark holds of painting. And of poetry, the suc¬ 
cess is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but 





LOVE. 


iS 

when it astonishes and fires us with new endeav¬ 
ors after the unattainable. Concerning it, Landor 
inquires “ whether it is not to be referred to some 
purer state of sensation and existence.” 

So must it be with personal beauty, which love 
worships. Then first is it charming and itself, 
when it dissatisfies us with any end ; when it be¬ 
comes a story without an end; when it suggests 
gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; 
when it seems 


“ too bright and good, 

For human nature’s daily food; ” 

when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness ; 
when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were 
Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it, than to 
the firmament and the splendors of a sunset. 

Hence arose the saying, u If I love you, what 
is that to you ? ” We say so, because we feel that 
what we love, is not in your will, but above it. 
It is the radiance of you and not you. It is that 
which you know not in yourself, and can never 
know. 

This agrees well with that high philosophy of 
Beauty which the ancient writers delighted in ; 
for they said, that the soul of man, embodied here 
on earth, went roaming up and down in quest 
of that other world of its own, out of which 
it came into this, but was soon stupefied by 
the light of the natural sun, and unable to see any 
other objects than those of this world, which are 
but shadows of real things. Therefore, the Deity 





16 love and Friendship. 

sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it 
may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its 
recollection of the celestial good and fair; and the 
man beholding such a person in the female sex, 
runs to her, and finds the highest joy in contem¬ 
plating the form, movement, and intelligence of 
this person, because it suggests to him the pres- 
sence of that which indeed is within the beauty, 
and the cause of the beauty. 

If, however, from too much conversing with 
material objects, the soul was gross, and mis¬ 
placed its satisfaction in the body, it reaped noth¬ 
ing but sorrow; body being unable to fulfil the 
promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting 
the hint of these visions and suggestions which 
beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes through 
the body, and falls to admire strokes of character, 
and the lovers contemplate one another in their 
discourses and their actions, then, they pass to the 
true palace of Beauty, more and more inflame their 
love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base 
affection, as the sun puts out the fire by shining 
on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. 
By conversation with that which is in itself excel¬ 
lent, magnanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes 
to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker 
apprehension of them. Then, he passes from loving 
them in one, to loving them in all, and so is the 
one beautiful soul only the door through which he 
enters to the society of all true and pure souls. 
In the particular society of his mate, he attains a 
clearer sight of any spot, any taint, which her 




LOVE. 


1 7 


beauty has contracted from this world, and is able 
to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they 
are now able without offence to indicate blemishes 
and hindrances in each other, and give to each all 
help and comfort in curing the same. And, be¬ 
holding in many souls the traits of the divine 
beauty, and separating in each soul that which is 
divine from the taint which they have contracted in 
the world, the lover ascends ever to the highest 
beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, 
by steps on this ladder of created souls. 

Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of 
love in all ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it 
new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, 
so have Petrarch, Angelo, and Milton. It awaits 
a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that 
subterranean prudence which presides at mar¬ 
riages with words that take hold of the upper 
world, whilst one eye is eternally boring down into 
the cellar, so that its gravest discourse has ever a 
slight savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, 
when the snout of this sensualism intrudes into 
the education of young women, and withers the 
hope and affection of human nature, by teaching 
that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife’s 
thrift, and that woman’s life has no other aim. 

But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only 
one scene in our play. In the procession of the 
soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles 
ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the 
light proceeding from an orb. The rays of the 
soul alight first on things nearest, on every utensil 








i8 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


and toy, on nurses and domestics, on the house 
and yard and passengers, on the circle of house¬ 
hold acquaintance, on politics, and geography, and 
history. But by the necessity of our constitution, 
tilings are ever grouping themselves according to 
higher or more interior laws. Neighborhood, size, 
numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their 
power over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, 
the longing for harmony between the soul and 
the circumstance, the high progressive idealizing 
instinct, these predominate later, and ever the 
step backward from the higher to the lower rela¬ 
tions is impossible. Thus even love, which is the 
deification of persons, must become more imper¬ 
sonal every day. Of this at first it gives no hint. 
Little think the youth and maiden who are glanc¬ 
ing at each other across crowded rooms, with eyes 
so full of mutual intelligence,—of the precious 
fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, quite 
external stimulus. The work of vegetation be¬ 
gins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf- 
buds. From exchanging glances, they advance to 
acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery pas¬ 
sion, to plighting troth and marriage. Passion be¬ 
holds its object as a perfect unit. The soul is 
wholly embodied, and the body is wholly en¬ 
souled. 

“ Her pure and eloquent blood 
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 
That one might almost say her body thought.” 

Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars 



LOVE . 


19 


to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has 
no other aim, asks no more than Juliet,—than 
Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, 
religion, are all contained in this form full of soul, 
in this soul which is all form. The lovers delight 
in endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons 
of their regards. When alone, they solace them¬ 
selves with the remembered image of the other. 
Does that other see the same star; the same melt¬ 
ing cloud, read the same book, feel the same emo¬ 
tion that now delight me ? They try and weigh 
their affection, and adding up all costly advan¬ 
tages, friends, opportunities, properties, exult in 
discovering that willingly, joyfully, they would 
give all as a ransom for the beautiful, the be¬ 
loved head, not one hair of which shall be 
harmed. But the lot of humanity is on these 
children. Danger, sorrow, and pain arrive to 
them, as to all. Love prays. It makes covenants 
with Eternal Power, in behalf of this dear mate. 
The union which is thus effected, and which adds 
a new value to every atom in nature, for it trans¬ 
mutes every thread throughout the whole web of 
relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in 
a new and sweeter element, is yet a temporary 
state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, pro¬ 
testations, nor even home in another heart, con¬ 
tent the awful soul that dwells in clay. It 
arouses itself at last from these endearments, as 
toys, and puts on the harness, and aspires to vast 
and universal aims. The soul which is in the soul of 
each, craving for a perfect beatitude, detects incon- 


20 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


gruities, defects, and disproportion in the behavior 
of the other. Hence arises surprise, expostula¬ 
tion, and pain. Yet that which drew them to 
each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue ; 
and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They 
appear and reappear, and continue to attract; but 
the regard changes, quits the sign, and attaches to 
the substance. This repairs the wounded affec¬ 
tion. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a 
game of permutation and combination of all pos¬ 
sible positions of the parties, to extort all the re¬ 
sources of each, and acquaint each with the whole 
strength and weakness of the other. For it is the 
nature and end of this relation, that they should 
represent the human race to each other. All that 
is in the world which is or ought to be known, is 
cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of 
woman. 


“ The person love does to us fit, 

Like manna, has the taste of all in it." 

The world rolls; the circumstances vary every 
hour. All the angels that inhabit this temple of 
the body appear at the windows, and all the 
gnomes and vices also. By all the virtues, they 
are united. If there be virtue, all the vices are 
known as such; they confess and flee. Their 
once flaming regard is sobered by time in either 
breast, and losing in violence what it gains in ex¬ 
tent, it becomes a thorough good understanding. 
They resign each other, without complaint, to the 





LOVE . 


21 


good offices which man and woman are severally 
appointed to discharge in time, and exchange the 
passion which once could not lose sight of its ob¬ 
ject, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, 
whether present or absent, of each other’s designs. 
At last they discover that all which at first drew 
them together,—those once sacred features, that 
magical play of charms,—was deciduous, had a 
prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the 
house was built ; and the purification of the intel¬ 
lect and the heart, from year to year, is the real 
marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and 
wholly above their consciousness. Looking at 
these aims with which two persons, a man and a 
woman, so variously and correlatively gifted, are 
shut up in one house to spend in the nuptial 
society forty or fifty years, I do not wonder at the 
emphasis with which the heart prophesies this 
crisis from early infancy, at the profuse beauty 
with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, 
and nature and intellect and art emulate each 
other in the gifts and the melody they bring to 
the epithalamium. 

Thus are we put in training for a love which 
knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but 
which seeketh virtue and wisdom everywhere, to 
the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We are 
by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is 
our permanent state. But we are often made to 
feel that our affections are but tents of a night. 
Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the 
affections change, as the objects of thought do. 


22 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


There are moments when the affections rule and 
absorb the man, and make his happiness dependent 
on a person or persons. But in health the mind 
is presently seen again,—its overarching vault, 
bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the 
warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, 
must lose their finite character, and blend with 
God, to attain their own perfection. But we need 
not fear that we can lose anything by the progress 
of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. 
That which is so beautiful and attractive as these 
relations, must be succeeded and supplanted only 
by what is more beautiful, and so on forever. 


FRIENDSHIP. 









FRIENDSHIP. 


We have a great deal more kindness than is 
ever spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills 
like east winds the world, the whole human family 
is bathed with an element of love like a fine 
ether. How many persons we meet in houses, 
whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, 
and who honor us ! How many we see in the 
street, or sit with in church, whom, though 
silently, we warmly rejoice to be with ! Read the 
language of these wandering eyebeams. The 
heart knoweth. 

The effect of the indulgence of this human af¬ 
fection is a certain cordial exhilaration. In 
poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of 
benevolence and complacency which are felt to¬ 
wards others, are likened to the material effects of 
fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, 
more cheering are these fine inward irradiations. 
From the highest degree of passionate love, to the 
lowest degree of good will, they make the sweet¬ 
ness of life. 

Our intellectual and active powers increase with 

(25) 





2 6 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


our affection. The scholar sits down to write, 
and all his years of meditation do not furnish him 
with one good thought or happy expression; but 
it is necessary to write a letter to a friend,—and, 
forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest them¬ 
selves, on every hand, with chosen words. See in 
any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the 
palpitation which the approach of a stranger 
causes. A commended stranger is expected and 
announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and 
pain invades all the hearts of a household. His 
arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that 
would welcome him. The house is dusted, all 
things fly into their places, the old coat is ex¬ 
changed for the new, and they must get up a din¬ 
ner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only 
the good report is told by others, only the good 
and new is heard by us. He stands to us for 
humanity. He is what we wish. Having imag¬ 
ined and invested him, we ask how we should 
stand related in conversation and action with such 
a man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea 
exalts conversation with him. We talk better 
than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, 
a richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken 
leave for the time. For long hours we can con¬ 
tinue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communi¬ 
cations, drawn from the oldest, secretest experi¬ 
ence, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk 
and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at 
our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger 
begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, 


FRIENDSHIP. 


27 


his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. He 
has heard the first, the last and best, he will ever 
hear from us. He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, 
ignorance, misapprehension, are old acquaint¬ 
ances. Now, when he comes, he may get the 
order, the dress, and the dinner,—but the throb¬ 
bing of the heart, and the communications of the 
soul, no more. 

Pleasant are these jets of affection which re¬ 
lume a young world for me again. Delicious is a 
just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a 
feeling. How beautiful, on their approach to this 
beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted 
and the true ! The moment we indulge our af¬ 
fections, the earth is metamorphosed: there is no 
winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis 
vanish;—all duties even; nothing fills the pro¬ 
ceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of be¬ 
loved persons. Let the soul be assured that some¬ 
where in the universe it should rejoin its friend, 
and it would be content and cheerful alone for a 
thousand years. 

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving 
for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not 
call God, the Beautiful, who daily showeth him¬ 
self so to me in his gifts ? I chide society, I em¬ 
brace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as 
not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble- 
minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. 
Who hears me, who understands me, becomes 
mine,—a possession for all time. Nor is nature so 
poor, but she gives me this joy several times, and 


28 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


thus we weave social threads of our own, a new 
web of relations; and, as many thoughts in suc¬ 
cession substantiate themselves, we shall by-and-by 
stand in a new world of our own creation, and no 
longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary 
globe. My friends have come to me unsought* 
The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, 
by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find 
them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me and in 
them, both deride and cancel the thick walls of 
individual character, relation, age, sex and circum¬ 
stance, at which he usually connives, and now 
makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excel¬ 
lent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new 
and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all 
my thoughts. These are not stark and stiffened 
persons, but the new-born poetry of God,—poetry 
without stop,—hymn, ode, and epic, poetry still 
flowing, and not yet caked in dead books with an¬ 
notation and grammar, but Apollo and the Muses 
chanting still. Will these too separate themselves 
from me again, or some of them ? I know not, 
but I fear it not; for my relation to them is so 
pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the 
Genius of my life being thus social, the same 
affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as 
noble as these men and women, wherever I may be. 

I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on 
this point. It is almost dangerous to me to 
“crush the sweet poison of misused wine ” of the 
affections. A new person is to me always a great 
event, and hinders me from sleep. I have had 




FRIENDSHIP. 


29 


sucli fine fancies lately about two or three per¬ 
sons, as have given me delicious hours ; but the 
joy ends in the day : it yields 110 fruit. Thought 
is not born of it; my action is very little modified. 
I must feel pride in my friend’s accomplish¬ 
ments as if they were mine,—wild, delicate, throb¬ 
bing property in his virtues. I feel as warmly 
when he is praised, as the lover when he hears ap¬ 
plause of his engaged maiden. We overestimate 
the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems 
better than our goodness, his nature finer, his 
temptations less. Everything that is his, his 
name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments, 
fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new 
and larger from his mouth. 

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not 
without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. 
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too 
good to be believed. The lover, beholding his 
maiden, half knows that she is not verily that 
which he worships; and in the golden hour of 
friendship, we are surprised with shades of suspi¬ 
cion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on 
our hero the virtues in which he shines, and after¬ 
wards worship the form to which we have ascribed 
this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul 
does not respect men as it respects itself. In strict 
science, all persons underlie the same condition of 
an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our 
love by facing the fact, by mining for the met¬ 
aphysical foundation of this Elysian temple ? 
Shall I not be as real as the things I see ? If I 


30 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


am, I shall not fear to know them for what they 
are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their 
appearance, though it needs finer organs for its 
apprehension. The root of the plant is not un¬ 
sightly to science, though for chaplets and 
festoons we cut the stem short. And I must 
hazard the production of the bald fact amidst 
these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an 
Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who 
stands united with his thought, conceives magnifi¬ 
cently of himself. He is conscious of a universal 
success, even though bought by uniform particu¬ 
lar failures. No advantages, no powers, no gold 
or force can be an}^ match for him. I cannot 
choose but rely on my own poverty, more than on 
your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness 
tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles ; the 
planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear w T hat 
you say of the admirable parts and tried temper 
of the party you praise, but I see well that for all 
his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is 
at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O 
friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal 
includes thee, also, in its pied and painted immen¬ 
sity,—thee, also, compared with whom all else is 
shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as 
Justice is,—thou art not my soul, but a picture 
and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, 
and already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. 
Is it not that the soul puts forth friends, as the 
tree puts forth leaves, and presently, b}^ the germ¬ 
ination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf ? The 



FRIENDSHIP . 


3 i 


law of nature is alternation forevermore. Each 
electrical state superinduces the opposite. The 
soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter 
into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude ; and 
it goes alone, for a season, that it may exalt its 
conversation or society. This method betrays 
itself along the whole history of our personal re¬ 
lations. Ever the instinct of affection revives the 
hope of union with our mates, and ever the re¬ 
turning sense of insulation recalls us from the 
chase. Thus every man passes his life in the 
search after friendship, and if he should record his 
true sentiment, he might write a letter like this, to 
each new candidate for his love. 

Dear Friend : 

If I was sure of thee, sure of 
thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I 
should never think again of trifles, in relation to thy 
comings and goings. I am not very wise: my moods 
are quite attainable: and I respect thy genius: it is to 
me as yet unfathomed ; yet dare I not presume in thee 
a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a 
delicious torment. Thine ever, or never. 

Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are 
for curiosity, and not for life. They are not to be 
indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not 
cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor 
conclusions, because we have made them a texture 
of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of 
the human heart. The laws of friendship are 
great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the 
laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed 
at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden 

12 


32 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the 
whole garden of God, which many summers and 
many winters must ripen. We seek our friend 
not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which 
would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. 
We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, 
which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and 
translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all 
people descend to meet. All association must be 
a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower 
and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful 
natures disappears as they approach each other. 
What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, 
even of the virtuous and gifted ! After inter¬ 
views have been compassed with long foresight, 
we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, 
by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of 
wit and of animal spirits, in the hey-day of friend¬ 
ship and thought. Our faculties do not play us 
true, and both parties are relieved by solitude. 

I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes 
no difference how many friends I have, and what 
content I can find in conversing with each, if 
there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have 
shrunk unequal from one contest, instantly the 
joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cow¬ 
ardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my 
other friends my asylum. 

“ The valiant warrior famoused for fight, 

After a hundred victories, once foiled, 

Is from the book of honor razed quite, 

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.” 


FRIENDSHIP. 


33 


Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bash¬ 
fulness and apathy are a tough husk in which a 
delicate organization is protected from premature 
ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before 
any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know 
and own it. Respect the naturlangsamkeit which 
hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in 
duration, in which Alps and Andes come and go 
as rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no 
heaven which is the price of rashness. Love, 
which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but 
for the total worth of man. Let us not have this 
childish luxury in our regards ; but the austerest 
worth ; let us approach our friend with an auda¬ 
cious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth 
impossible to be overturned, of his foundations. 

The attractions of this subject are not to be re¬ 
sisted, and I leave, for the time, all account of 
subordinate social benefit, to speak of that select 
and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, 
and which even leaves the language of love sus¬ 
picious and common, so much is this purer, and 
nothing is so much divine. 

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but 
with roughest courage. When they are real, they 
are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solid 
est thing we know. For now, after so many ages 
of experience, what do we know of nature, or of 
ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward 
the solution of the problem of his destiny. In 
one condemnation of folly stand the whole uni¬ 
verse of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and 




34 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


peace, which I draw from this alliance with my 
brother’s soul, is the nut itself whereof all nature 
and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy 
is the house that shelters a friend ! It might well 
be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain 
him a single day. Happier, if he know the solem¬ 
nity of that relation, and honor its law ! It is no 
idle band, no holiday engagement. He who offers 
himself as a candidate for that covenant, comes up, 
like an Olympian, to the great games, where the 
first-born of the world are the competitors. He 
proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, 
Danger are in the lists, and he alone is victor who 
has truth enough in his constitution to preserve 
the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear 
of all these. The gifts of fortune may be present 
or absent, but all tTe hap in that contest depends 
on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. 
There are two elements that go to the composi¬ 
tion of friendship, each so sovereign, that 1 can 
detect no superiority in either, no reason why 
either should be first named. One is Truth. A 
friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. 
Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at 
last in the presence of a man so real and equal, 
that I may drop even those undermost garments 
of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, 
which men never put off, and may deal with him 
with the simplicity and wholeness with which one 
chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the 
luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only 
to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak 


FRIENDSHIP. 


35 


truth, as having none above it to court or conform 
unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the en¬ 
trance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We 
parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by 
compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. 
We cover up our thought from him under a hun¬ 
dred folds. I knew a man who, under a certain 
religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and omit¬ 
ting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to 
the conscience of every person he encountered, 
and that with great insight and beauty. At first 
he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. 
But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, 
for some time in this course, he attained to the 
advantage of bringing every man of his acquain¬ 
tance into true relations with him. No man 
would think of speaking falsely with him, or of 
putting him off with any chat of markets or read¬ 
ing-rooms. But every man was constrained by so 
much sincerity to face him, and what love of na¬ 
ture, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, 
he did certainly show him. But to most of us so¬ 
ciety shows not its face and eye, but its side and 
its back. To stand in true relations with men in 
a false age, is worth a fit of insanity, is it not ? 
We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we 
meet requires some civility, requires to be hu¬ 
mored ;—he has some fame, some talent, some 
whim of religion or philanthrophy in his head that 
is not to be questioned, and so spoils all conversa¬ 
tion with him. But a friend is a sane man who 
exercises not my ingenuity but me. My friend 



36 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


gives me entertainment without requiring me to 
stoop, or to lisp, or to mask myself. A friend, 
therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who 
alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose ex¬ 
istence 1 can affirm with equal evidence to my 
own, behold now the semblance of my being in all 
its height, variety and curiosity, reiterated in a 
foreign form ; so that a friend may well be reck¬ 
oned the masterpiece of nature. 

The other element of friendship is Tenderness. 
We are holden to men by every sort of tie, by 
blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, 
by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance 
and badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe 
that so much character can subsist in another as 
to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed, 
and we so pure, that we can offer him tenderness? 
When a man becomes dear to me, I have touched 
the goal of fortune. I find very little written 
directly to the heart of this matter in books. 
And yet I have one text which I cannot choose 
but remember. My author says, “ I offer m} r self 
faintly and bluntly to those whose I effectually 
am, and tender myself least to him to whom I 
am the most devoted.” I wish that friendship 
should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. 
It must plant itself on the ground, before it walks 
over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citi¬ 
zen, before it is quite a cherub. We chide the 
citizen because he makes love a commodity. It is 
an exchange of gifts, of useful loans ; it is good 
neighborhood; it watches with the sick \ it holds 


FRIENDSHIP. 


37 


the pall at the funeral; ancl quite loses sight of 
the delicacies and nobility of the relation. But 
though we cannot find the god under this disguise 
of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot for¬ 
give the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and 
does not substantiate his romance by the munic¬ 
ipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and 
pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of 
friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. 
I much prefer the company of plough-boys and 
tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed amity 
which only celebrates its days of encounter by a 
frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and din¬ 
ners at the best taverns. The end of friendship 
is a commerce the most strict and homely that 
can be joined; more strict than any of which we 
have experience. It is for aid and comfort 
through all the relations and passages of life and 
death. It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, 
and country rambles, but also for rough roads and 
hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. 
It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and 
the trances of religion. We are to dignify to 
each other the daily needs and offices of man’s 
life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and 
unity. It should never fall into something usual 
and settled, but should be alert and inventive, 
and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery. 

For perfect friendship it may be said to require 
natures so rare and costly, so well tempered each, 
and so happily adapted, and withal so circum¬ 
stanced, (for even in that particular, a poet says, 




38 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


love demands that the parties be altogether 
paired) that very seldom can its satisfaction be 
realized. It cannot subsist in its perfection, say 
some of those who are learned in this warm lore 
of the heart, betwixt more than two. I am not 
quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I 
have never known so high a fellowship as others. 
I please my imagination more with a circle of 
godlike men and women variously related to each 
other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelli¬ 
gence. But I find this law of one to one , peremp¬ 
tory for conversation, which is the practice and 
consummation of friendship. Do not mix waters 
too much. The best mix as ill as good and bad. 
You shall have very useful and cheering discourse 
at several times with two several men, but let all 
three of you come together, and you shall not 
have one new and hearty word. Two may talk 
and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a 
conversation of the most sincere and searching 
sort. In good company there is never such dis¬ 
course between two, across the table, as takes 
place when you leave them alone. In good com¬ 
pany, the individuals at once merge their egotism 
into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the 
several consciousnesses there present. No partial¬ 
ities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother 
to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, 
but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak 
who can sail on the common thought of the party, 
and not poorly limited to his own. Now this 
convention, which good sense demands, destroys 





FRIENDSHIP. 


39 


the high freedom of great conversation, which re¬ 
quires an absolute running of two souls into one. 

No two men but being left alone with each 
other, enter into simpler relations. Yet it is 
affinity that determines which two shall converse. 
Unrelated men give little joy to each other ; will 
never suspect the latent powers of each. We 
talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, 
as if it were a permanent property in some indi¬ 
viduals. Conversation is an evanescent relation, 
—no more. A man is reputed to have thought 
and eloquence ; he cannot, for all that, say a word 
to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his 
silence with as much reason as they would blame 
the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the 
sun it will mark the hour. Among those who en¬ 
joy his thought, lie will regain his tongue. 

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt 
likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the 
presence of power and of consent in the other 
party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, 
rather than that my friend should overstep by a 
word or a look his real sympathy. I am equally 
baulked by antagonism and by compliance. Let 
him not cease an instant to be himself. The only 
joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine 
is mine. It turns the stomach, it blots the day¬ 
light ; where I looked for a manly furtherance, or 
at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of con¬ 
cession. Better be a nettle in the side of your 
friend than his echo. The condition which 
high friendship demands is ability to do without 


40 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


it. To be capable of that high office, requires 
great and sublime parts. There must be very 
two, before there can be very one. Let it be an 
alliance of two large formidable natures, mutually 
beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recog¬ 
nize the deep identity which beneath these dis¬ 
parities unites them. 

He only is fit for this society who is magnan¬ 
imous. He must be so, to know its law. He 
must be one who is sure that greatness and good¬ 
ness are always economy. He must be one who 
is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. Let 
him not dare to intermeddle with this. Leave to 
the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accel¬ 
erate the births of the eternal. Friendship de¬ 
mands a religious treatment. We must not be 
wilful, we must not provide. We talk of choosing 
our friends, but friends are self elected. Reverence 
is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. 
Of course, if he be a man, he has merits that are 
not yours, and that you cannot honor, if you must 
needs hold him close to your person. Stand 
aside. Give those merits room. Let them mount 
and expand. Be not so much his friend that you 
can never know his peculiar energies, like fond 
mammas who shut up their boy in the house un¬ 
til he is almost grown a girl. Are you the friend 
of your friend’s buttons, or of his thought? To 
a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thou¬ 
sand particulars, that he may come near in the 
holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to re¬ 
gard a friend as property, and to suck a short and 


FRIENDSHIP. 


41 


all-confounding pleasure instead of the pure nec¬ 
tar of God. 

Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long 
probation. Why should we desecrate noble and 
beautiful souls by intruding on them ? Why in¬ 
sist on rash personal relations with your friend ? 
Why go to his house, or know his mother and 
brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at 
your own ? Are these things material to our 
covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. 
Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, 
a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not 
news, nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, 
and neighborly conveniences, from cheaper com¬ 
panions. Should not the society of my friend be 
to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature 
itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in 
comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps 
on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that 
divides the brook? Let us not vilify but raise it 
to that standard. That great defying eye, that 
scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not 
pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and 
enhance. Worship his superiorities. Wish him 
not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. 
Guard him as thy great counterpart; have a 
princedom to thy friend. Let him be to thee for¬ 
ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, de¬ 
voutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to 
be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of 
the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be 
seen, if the e} r e is too near. To my friend I write 



42 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That 
seems to you a little. Me it suffices. It is a spir¬ 
itual gift worthy of him to give and of me to re¬ 
ceive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines 
the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the 
tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier 
existence than all the annals of heroism have yet 
made good. 

Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship 
as not to prejudice its perfect flower by your im¬ 
patience for its opening. We must be our own, 
before we can be another’s. There is at least this 
satisfaction in crime, according to the Latin prov¬ 
erb ; you can speak to your accomplice on even 
terms. Crimen quos inquinat , cequat. To those 
whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. 
Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in 
my judgment, the entire relation. There can 
never be deep peace between two spirits, never 
mutual respect until, in their dialogue, each stands 
for the whole world. 

What is so great as friendship let us carry 
with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be 
silent,—so we may hear the whisper of the gods. 
Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about 
what you should say to the select souls, or to say 
anything to such? No matter how ingenious, no 
matter how graceful and bland. There are in¬ 
numerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for 
you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and 
thy soul shall speak. Wait until the necessary 
and everlasting overpowers you, until day and. 


FRIENDSHIP. 


43 


niglit avail themselves of your lips. The only 
money of God is God. He pays never with any¬ 
thing less or anything else. The only reward of 
virtue, is virtue ; the only way to have a friend, is 
to be one. Vain to hope to come nearer a man by 
getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only 
flees the faster from you, and you shall catch never 
a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar 
off, and they repel us; why should we intrude? 
Late—very late—we perceive that no arrange¬ 
ments, no introductions, no consuetudes, or habits 
of society, would be of any avail to establish us in 
such relations with them as we desire,—but solely 
the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it 
is in them ; then shall we meet as water with 
water; and if we should not meet them then, we 
shall not want them, for we are already they. In 
the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a 
man’s own worthiness from other men. Men have 
sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as 
if they would signify that in their friend eacli 
loved his own soul. 

The higher the style we demand of friendship, 
of course the less easy to establish it with llesh 
and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends, 
such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a 
sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that 
elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, 
souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which 
can love us, and which we can love. We may 
congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, 
of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is passed in 


44 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall 
grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be ad¬ 
monished by what you already see, not to strike 
leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where 
no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us 
into rash and foolish alliances which no God at¬ 
tends. By persisting in your path, though you 
forfeit the little, you gain the great. You become 
pronounced. l r ou demonstrate yourself, so as to 
put yourself out of the reach of false relations, 
and you draw to you the first-born of the world, 
—those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two 
wander in nature at once, and before whom the 
vulgar great, show as spectres and shadows merely. 

It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too 
spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. 
V/’hatever correction of our popular views we 
m,^e from insight, nature will be sure to bear us 
o JX in, and though it seem to rob us of some joy, 
will repay us with a greater. Let us feel, if we 
will, the absolute insulation of man. We are sure 
that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we 
pursue persons, or we read books, in the instinct¬ 
ive faith that these will call it out and reveal us to 
ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as 
we; the Europe, an old faded garment of dead 
persons; the books, their ghosts. Let us drop 
this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. 
Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and 
defy them, saying, “ Who are you ? Unhand me ; 
I will be dependent no more.” Ah! seest thou 
not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet 


FRIENDSHIP. 


45 


again on a higher platform, and only be more each 
other’s, because we are more our own ? A friend 
is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the 
luture. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, 
the prophet of those to come. He is the harbinger 
of a greater friend. It is the property of the di¬ 
vine to be reproductive. 

I do then with my friends as I do with my 
books. I would have them where I can find 
them, but I seldom use them. We must have 
society on our own terms, and admit or exclude 
it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to 
speak much with my friend. If he is great, he 
makes me so great that I cannot descend to con¬ 
verse. In the great days, presentiments hover 
before me, far before me in the firmament. I 
ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go 
that J may seize them, I go out that I im y 
seize them. I fear only that I may lose them 
receding into the sky in which now they are only 
a patch of brighter light. Then, though I prize 
my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and 
study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would 
indeed give me a certain household joy to quit 
this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or 
search of stars, and come down to warm sympa¬ 
thies with you; but then I know well I shall 
mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods. 
It is true, next week I shall have languid times, 
when I can well afford to occupy myself with 
foreign objects; then I shall regret the lost liter¬ 
ature of your mind, and wish you were by my 


46 


LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 


side again. But if you come, perhaps you will 
fill my mind only with new visions, not with 
yourself but with your lustres, and I shall not be 
able any more than now to converse with you. 
So I will owe to my friends this evanescent inter¬ 
course. I will receive from them not what they 
have, but what they are. They shall give me that 
which properly they cannot give me, but which 
radiates from them. But they shall not hold me 
by any relations less subtle and pure. We will 
meet as though we met not, and part as though 
we parted not. 

It has seemed to me lately more possible than 
I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, 
without due correspondence on the other. Why 
should I cumber myself with the poor fact that 
the receiver is not capacious ? It never troubles 
the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain 
into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the 
reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the 
crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he 
will presently pass away, but thou art enlarged 
by thy own shining; and, no longer a mate for 
frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the 
gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace 
to love unrequited. But the great will see that 
true love cannot be unrequited. True love tran¬ 
scends instantly the unworthy object, and dwells 
and broods on the eternal, and when the poor, 
interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels 
}'id of so much earth, and feels its independency 
the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said 


FRIENDSHIP. 


47 


without a sort of treachery to the relation. The 
essence of friendship is entireness, a total mag¬ 
nanimity and trust. It must not surmise or pro¬ 
vide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, 
that it may deify both. 















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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 







